


go fight in the abandoned quarry like a responsible adult

by gootarts



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe-Tokusatsu, Humor, Other, uhhh if you're not familiar with tokusatsu in this instance it's pretty much a superhero au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27790975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gootarts/pseuds/gootarts
Summary: Villains aren't exactly known to be social butterflies, so Battler is glad that he's slowly getting to know the one he fished out of the river.
Relationships: Ushiromiya Battler & Yasuda Sayo, could probably be read as battler/sayo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	go fight in the abandoned quarry like a responsible adult

**Author's Note:**

> "what is tokutasu", you ask. the answer is simple: it's [this](https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_p0te9tKMmp1wadf67.mp4). i will not elaborate further.

You’d think in a world where people with superpowers regularly ran around in public would be chaotic. After all, no matter how strong you were, a mere scratch or poorly-maintained spandex suit was nothing more than a couple strands away from a public indecency charge, right? Surprisingly though, even with people with the power to destroy worlds or cover the earth in darkness or yada yada yada flitting around, there were concrete rules, and they were followed.

First, you left pedestrians out of it. If somebody was feeling like they were in a rut, and perhaps were looking for a bit of character development, or something to make them realize something about their inherent destiny, _then_ you approach them with the magic potion thing that turns them into a monster until they were freed from their spell by the hero.

Second, you didn’t interfere with somebody’s declared rival. The whole idea, the inherent eroticism behind swearing that only you and you alone would defeat somebody, was sacred! If one were to fight, or much less, _defeat_ , somebody’s rival, that was no different than cuckolding. Which, well, it was fine if you were into that, but otherwise? Major turn-off.

Third, you took all big fights to the abandoned quarry, like a responsible adult. If you were looking to spice things up, perhaps you could choose a less conventional choice, such as an abandoned warehouse, or the outside of a stadium, or a plaza. But for anything requiring a big, explosive teamup? Abandoned quarry.

Now, as for Battler Ushiromiya? He was a businessman; not a hero, and certainly not an antagonist. At least, he hoped the guys working for his dad’s company didn’t think of him as a villain. True, he had a couple close friends in the hero industry, but that was mostly because of his unfortunate hobby as a teen of hanging out with a set of binoculars at abandoned quarries—not because he was interested in the heroes, but because of the _villains_. It was embarrassing, but pretty much every middle school kid had some sort of embarrassing phase like that, right? Especially since, well—the female kaijin were sexy. Embarrassing to admit, but extremely true.

So he was familiar to a couple of the tropes, at least.

And noticing a floating, unconscious body floating in the river as you walked home from work? _Definitely_ one of them. Doubly so that there was a suit surrounding them, protecting their body from harm.

He’d have to wade in to reach them. He sighed. He _liked_ this pair of pants quite a bit! But if it was to save some stranger floating in the river who may or may not be dead, he might as well make himself look ridiculous and chuck them on the riverbank. And the rest of his suit, too. Wasn’t like he wasn’t used to looking ridiculous, given the way Ange was constantly insulting his hair.

The water was cold. No, it was _freezing_. It had no right to be that cold—the weather wasn’t even that bad! And it was after work, too! It would’ve had the entire day to warm up, right? Feeling the heat leaving his legs was enough to turn off his brain to everything but the person floating in front of him; unlike him, the person who floating down the too-cold-to-live lazy river didn’t seem to have any opinions either way. They didn’t respond when he grabbed their shoulders and tugged them towards the shore. Probably for the best; he really, _really_ didn’t want to deal with getting dunked in a struggle.

Once free of the freezing river, his brain started to register a bit more. First, that their helmet was cracked like a windshield—completely shattered on the right side of their face, with a single chunk torn out in the middle (bad). The part of the visor missing at least told him that they were breathing (good), and that they had brown hair (no opinion). As for the rest of them, well, he had no idea. There were different _types_ of heroes, and that type was reflected in their powers and suit. Their suit was a mix of gold, red, and black, accentuated by some sort of insect motif. Judging from the belt on their waist, they probably got those powers from that. Which meant that a bit of fidgeting with it, and—presto! The suit disappeared, leaving behind an unconscious brunette.

Their hands didn’t feel cold, so the suit must’ve insulated them from the river. Maybe he should call an ambulance? As he traced their scalp for any fractures, the brunette’s eyelids twitched once, twice, and then shot open. At least that solved that question?

And then he was completely ignored as they stood up. And then fell over. Okay.

“Should I call an ambulance?” The stranger stood up once, shook their head, and then collapsed. Again.

Okay.

At least they didn’t protest too much when he scooped them up and carried them to his apartment. As long as the pedestrians assumed the person he was bridal carrying through the streets was drunk and didn’t call the cops, he’d be fine. Probably. Hopefully! He didn’t hear any police sirens when he laid them down on his couch, so that was a good thing. At a first glance, they didn’t seem mortally wounded or anything—no blood anywhere near where the mask shattered, nothing steeping through their clothes. Compared to his still-shivering body and the suit dripping onto his floor, they practically got out of the river scot-free.

Since they’d already woken up once before, they’d probably wake up again. Might as well reheat some leftover takeout in that case, and maybe rinse off the river water in the shower. Add in a short note saying that he found them in the river so that they didn’t wreck his apartment and assume he kidnapped them to the plate of warm fried rice, and bam! Bases covered to ensure he could turn the shower heat up to scalding without worrying about being barged in on.

As he toweled off his hair, still sagging like a limp noodle from that blessed, blessed warm shower, the stranger was both upright and rummaging through his cabinets. Which was not great. Not great at all. They only stared back, probably because he was only wearing a towel around his waist.

“Are you Sento?” They asked, as if flipping through his stuff was normal! Just hearing the logical, normal pronunciation of the kanji in his name made him involuntarily grit his teeth and mentally curse his old bastard. On top of that….where did this person see his name written? Were they flipping through the letters addressed to him that he’d left on the counter or something?At least if he’d gotten somebody actually dangerous, somebody probably would’ve alerted an authority or fated rival or something and they’d deal with them. Probably.

“My name’s Battler. It’s written weird. What about you?” He puffed out his chest as best he could, hoping to maybe intimidate this person who could probably transform and kick the shit out of him if they wanted to. Maybe bringing a complete stranger to his apartment was a bad idea.

“Papillion is the name of my suit.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything about you! I pulled you out of the river, right? I deserve more than your suit’s name!” Look, if they wanted to play up the whole mysterious angle, sure, but after he saved them? At least give him a real name! He crossed his arms, hoping to maybe at least get a nickname or something. Despite being able to channel power he could only begin to understand, the other person's wispy frame was dwarfed by his size. Maybe having to look a dozen centimeters up to address him changed the calculus, but they were silent for a moment before speaking, his ID still clutched in their hands.

“…Sayo.” The reply was businesslike, as if they were speaking to a lawyer instead of a soggy mess. A moment later, his documents were returned to the counter.

“So you’re Sayo and Papillion?” He didn’t get a response besides a nod. K. “You feeling okay? You did sorta get fished out a river.”

“I’m fine,” they said as if they didn’t take a blow that would have _shattered their skull_ if not for the suit. “I appreciate you not stealing any of my stuff.”

Aaaand with that they were gone.

You’d think that somebody who was hurt that badly would at least call a taxi, or an ambulance, or _something_. And wouldn’t have thanked him for not taking their stuff when they were rooting through his stuff at the same time.

At least upon further inspection, they didn’t take anything of his.

* * *

Villain code adhered to a certain etiquette, a certain _elegance_. And while hanging out in abandoned, rotting factories was not exactly elegant, it was tradition. You couldn’t argue with that, especially since you would typically be removed from an actually nice lair because of loitering.

Even so, Sayo hated them. The buildings were always rotting from mold, the ceilings caving in from moisture. Even more obnoxious were the upstart villains, the ones with a sparkling new belt and the ego to match constantly challenging the established groups for the limited amount of decrepit real estate suitable for the lair of a villain. In comparison, wandering around the prefecture after dark was like getting home from a hard day at work and unwinding with a warm bath. For the most part, other villains didn’t think you were worth the time to pester; the only ones who took the time to approach you were typically women, the kind who would gently ask to become a monster not out of revenge or anger, but because it was something that would keep them from constantly looking over their shoulder as they walked home alone.

Therefore, they weren’t particularly surprised when the lady approached, eyes darting to every location but their mask. Out of everything in her outfit—the hair colored so bright pink it seemed to be glowing under the streetlights, the baton clutched so tight in her hands that they were drained of any color, the shirt with an old band whose name barely rang a bell—it was those nervous eyes that attracted the most attention.

“Erm, are you…? Could you help me for a bit? Uhm, I’m sorry for any trouble, but! My sister is moving tomorrow, and her furniture is super heavy!” Every other word seemed apologetic for taking up Sayo’s time, but the picture of her sister he presented after a moment of digging through her smartphone looked legit, at least. “I can give any accumulated power back, I just need it for a day!”

Body language in a suit was different from when it was in regular conversation. There were no eyebrows to arch, no mouth to frown. As long as they stood stock-still, the woman had no idea what they were thinking as her voice trailed off, her tone somehow reaching a tone higher and somehow more apologetic than it was a moment ago. “I’m not very strong, and I wanted to save on moving, so…”

Sayo was still motionless when the woman opened LINE, jabbing her fingers at a half-dozen messages that she could barely read from the distance. At the very least, the piles of boxes in the photos was testament to somebody moving in the near future. The nervousness, too, wasn’t normally the mark of somebody approaching with the intent to lure you into a trap.

The decision to transform somebody into a monster was not a decision made lightly, but it was not made with the weight of the world at your back, either. It was simply something you did, or didn’t do. There was no irreversible void you could never climb back out of, nor was it a crack you could simply walk over. Sayo’s choice was normally based on a cold reading, the type that could leave even the most dedicated detective turning their head over in their hands. In that split second before she had opened that app, she’d displayed a half-dozen apps, a message from a friend, and her phone’s background; the backs of her forearms had the opening notes of an old symphony; combined, the tidbits of information she gave off all spoke of a musician. The nervous jitters felt true, not forced. And the eyes darting from place to place were out of embarrassment, not deception.

This woman was fine. It wouldn’t be a problem to turn her into something for a day.

“Then, come. Close your eyes and try to remember the beast that forms the root of humanity.” It was a solemn oath, one they refused to give without some sort of proper ambiance; their voice low and growling, their body silent as their hand darted out to touch her face. The power, the charm of a villain was not stored within their suit, but wrapped up within their mystery. Turning somebody into a monster was not something you simply did on the subway platform; it demanded _spectacle_.

The flash of spectacle fell short as the woman flinched and fell on her ass. her eyes were like twin moons as they reflected the light, trying to glimpse every bit of them for fear that they would walk away. They would be lying if that wasn’t tempting as her arms windmilled, almost spinning into their shins.

“Ah, sorry! I didn’t expect that, can we do that again? Please?” They stepped forwards before her fingers could fully dart into the pocket that kept her wallet, bending down and pressing her palm to his forehead, but slower this time.

“Come. Close your eyes and try to remember the beast that forms the root of humanity. What form did it have? Was it an elegant form? A powerful one?” That strange swell in their chest appeared as they spoke the words, same as it always did. It whispered in their heart, drawing their entire soul into the speech until it was not them speaking, but some strange beast that had bubbled up deep within them. “Close your eyes and try to remember.”

_Remember. Remember the deadly, bloody path that humanity walked down to get to this point. Remember that the skyscrapers around you are only standing because of your ancestors’ corpses, pillars of flesh reaching towards the sky. Remember those moments, millions and millions of years ago, where a mere mouthful of meat was enough to spell the difference between life and death. Remember, and turn into that beast which knows humanity’s struggle for mere existence._

Even if no modern humans consciously knew what it was like to constantly be on the verge of death, that data was still there, coded in their genes, forged from thousands, millions of years of bloody struggle. For those ancient apes that would someday be called humans, every day, every breath was pure struggle to survive in a world that wanted nothing more than to grind their entire existence to dust beneath the gears of time. ****

If not for that power, Sayo was not sure if they would be standing here today; becoming a villain could, in a strange way, fight those monsters in their mind. Somebody who once had no hopes for the future was soon making plans, dreams of future fights, battles, conflicts and looking _forwards_ to them. All because of the armor cloaking their body. ****

They’d mentally begged for something to make life worth it. and they got it. Even if their mind hadn’t climbed out from the hole it had dug itself into, it was no longer at the bottom. Instead of focusing on a miasma of self-deprecation, it was focused on the woman in front of them, her flesh shifting under their gaze as he _remembered_. ****

Teeth became fangs, hair became fur. The human in front of them remembered what it once was, and what it could have been, had nature taken a slightly different course. Instead of a human standing before them, the woman was both human and not. Even if its natural form was warped by the hulking frame towering over her, it was hard to mistake the short, shiny fur or the long ears flopping down against the back of her body.

“Rabbit.” Granted, there were still changes—it was as if nature had taken a look at the creature and tried to make it more and more dangerous, an apex predator rather than a simple herbivore. Features were exaggerated, but it was still, at its core, a rabbit. The monster seemed to nod in agreement as she spun like a top, trying to get a sense of this new body.

“Meet me here at the same time tomorrow so that I can undo this, understood? Another suit could also do it if it's a matter of life or death.”

The monster’s mouth opened, then closed as it let out a sound that was more of a squeal than a sentence. She attempted to speak as if dancing a slow rondo over and over again, her jaw hinging and unhinging as if he were a dog with peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“Are you able to come during that time?” There was no mistaking the enthusiasm of that nod. “Good. I’ll meet you there. Speech will be difficult for you. Don’t force the issue, and bring a pad of paper.”

The monster nodded as she glanced down at her body, to see if her pockets were carrying any, but all she saw was fur. She looked back up. then back down, at where her pants would be, then back to Sayo. She began to point, her fingers trying to mime a small rectangle, before gesturing back, moving her hands in wide, controlled motions. Sayo tried to follow the strange, confusing movements of her hands before finally taking a step back.

“Are you miming letters?” Nod. Okay, that narrowed things down. “Re..shi…ressha. What about the train?”

Her fingers once again formed a rectangle, before they glanced down at the ground around her. Was she trying to signal a train number? A time? …No. It was supposed to be a ticket. “You don’t have your wallet.”

She nodded as Sayo groaned. It was the oldest, most obvious thing in the book, and they’d still missed it! You weren’t supposed to transform somebody until they’d taken all the important stuff out of their pockets; it would then be hidden under the hulking mass of a monster, impossible to pull back out until the transformation was undone. “Give me a moment.“

Their palm met her forehead yet again, or what would have been her human forehead. At once, the muscle surrounding her frame disintegrated into a typhoon of tiny butterflies. The thing before them was a simple human once more.

“If you still want to do this again, take out your wallet, phone, and keys. Lay them on the ground so you can pick them up afterwards.” Even if it sounded like Sayo was about to rob her blind, Sayo wanted nothing more than to go back to their apartment and lie on the couch; if they weren’t wearing armor, they would’ve rubbed their temples. At least she was obedient as they pressed their palm against her skin for a third time that night.

“Come. Close your eyes and try to remember the beast that forms the root of humanity. What form did it have? Was it an elegant form? A powerful one? Close your eyes and try to remember.” Even if it was the second time they had said it, it reverberated in their body no less than the first time. Even if they knew what would happen, what monster would take shape before them, it still resonated like a gong, filling their eardrums as she looked up, their gaze meeting the monster’s.

“Good. be sure to meet me here tomorrow, okay?”

She gave Sayo a nod and hopped off to the train, leaving Sayo to rub their forehead and wander back to their apartment. The bullshit involved with that was enough nonsense for one night. 

They wished that villain-ing wasn't always like this, but hoping for that would be like wishing for hell to freeze over.

* * *

He’d looked up a bit of info on the person later; not the name, but the hero. A person could forget a face easily, but a bright gold suit of armor covering every bit of your body? Not so easy to mistake for anybody else. There were a couple blog posts and more than a couple blurry tweets, all pointed towards the same thing: _villain_. Or, at least, antihero. Thinking on it, they did have all the specs; a strange feeling about them, as if they weren’t in that world. Or, more telling, the pitch-black outfit that seemed to hide as much as their personality as it could. ****

It was weird, though. For his first actual interaction with a villain, not counting the times he’d staked out a fight spot as a kid hoping for a glimpse of monster titty, they didn’t seem too bad. He’d talked with local heroes before, of course—every kid did, with those community park meetings as the announcers told you to eat healthy, or do your best, or study hard. But villains? They were like roaches skittering from the light, scared not of the law but of damage to the personality they had cultivated for themselves. It wasn't exactly illegal to be a villain unless you did an actual crime. For all intents and purposes, two suits fistfighting in a quarry was not a crime; nor was fulfilling a desire to become a monster and fight.

Granted, actually catching glimpse of that happening was rare at best. You’d hear stories about a villain doing something every once in a while, and you’d catch glimpse of one, but to actually talk to one, much less save one? That was a rarity. You’d get glimpses of them, hear stories, maybe snap a picture of one on your phone, but you never really _met_ them in any way that mattered. That was the point, after all. Weren’t they supposed to be hidden, mysterious, all that? 

Even so, some part of him began to slow down when he was near those popular fight spots; under bridges, near wide open meadows, empty forests. He kept telling himself it meant nothing, even as it became not an occasional glance but a routine. He kept telling himself that it wasn’t a hobby that _led_ to anything—it was just a quirk! A weird habit! Something that wouldn’t lead to anything, that wouldn’t impact his life in any meaningful fashion, even if the entire point of it was to catch glimpse of that shimmering golden suit once again.

After all, even if he was very bad bordering on terrible at lying to others, he was very good at believing those falsehoods when he told them to himself.

* * *

If there was one thing at work that Battler wholeheartedly, unrelentingly enjoyed, it was the street food vendors. They were the backbone, no, the core of that blessed half-hour of lunchtime freedom. Their blessed presence was the thing that whisked him away from those omnipresent boredom-inducing variety shows in the break room. From the low, warbling cries of “yaaaaaki-imooooo” in the winter to the roadside ramen stands to the food trucks who could summon a crowd with a mere tweet, it was a delicacy that fueled the blood pumping into his beating heart.

Nice, hot food that you got to eat in the shade was delicious; the excuse to escape from his office and people watch was merely the cherry on top of a delicious freedom sundae. The plaza outside was a mere moment’s walk from his office, and there were always businessmen mulling about, kids playing on the sidewalk, and, rarely, fights.

In that half-hour of escapism, he would rarely get a glimpse of two monsters locked in a brawl, or a duo cloaked in armor duking it out. The first couple times it had happened, he had paid rapt attention, but the experience had quickly slipped from novel into mundane. But, after meeting Sayo, he couldn’t help but to keep an eye on it, hoping to maybe get a glimpse of that golden armor.

As he nibbled on his lunch, a ring of people had already formed around the sound of combat. The view he got as he darted through the crowd to get a glimpse wasn’t armor inlaid with gold, but shades of navy and brown. A woman clad in some sort of armor decorated with a spider insignia darted in and out, striking blows with some sort of tonfa against the hide of some sort of monster.

The monster, in return, was trying its best to return the blows, rearing and screeching, but unable to land anything more than a glancing hit. Even so, it stood its ground, growling and rearing to keep its distance.

In return, the woman raised her arm, and a ball of some sort of light appeared. With the speed of an experienced pitcher, she lobbed it at the monster once, twice three times as it hit the hide with a painful smack. But as she aimed the fourth, the monster charged, the ball of light skittering off towards the crowd.

It barely registered that it was headed towards him before he _felt_ the sound of it being blocked.

If he didn’t flinch from the light, he flinched from the sound as it was deflected mere millimeters from his face by a gloved hand. It had _caught_ the ball of energy with a single motion; like the hot asphalt would warp the air above it on a hot day, that projectile was almost warping reality, sending off enough heat that he could feel his eyebrows scorching.

With a single motion, the hand closed around it, shattering it as they stepped into the ring.

The whispered conversation that had been tossed around the throng suddenly took on a fever pitch as everybody slowly took a couple deliberate steps back.

He didn’t catch the person transforming, but how they’d transformed in that millisecond of reaction time, he didn’t know. The slipstream of a transformation jingle, the audible equivalent of an aftershock, filled the air as the armor stepped into the ring. The armor was strange, bulky and red, its form shaped enough like a beetle that there was no doubt that its design was solely for defense. That suit stepped between the two brawlers with ease, arms spread.

“What do you think you are doing with the person I transformed?” Something about the scene was strangely familiar, tugging at the strands of his memory, until he placed it—the belts of the two combatants were the same as the one Sayo had worn. The form donning them was different, but there was no mistaking the design of the belt.

“Oh, it was yours? My apologies.” Paired with the mocking tone of voice, the curtsy the spider suit gave felt more insulting than apologetic.

“You’re using projectiles with civilians nearby. Isn’t that illegal?”

“It’s quite a good thing you stepped in, then.” The beetle suit ignored the spider and stepped over the monster, offering a hand to help her up.

“I apologize. Did you do what you needed to do?” At the enthusiastic nod of the monster, the beetle placed a gloved hand on her forehead. Almost immediately, the air around them teamed with a storm of butterflies, so thick that he couldn’t have seen any fighting if he’d wanted to.

And then, the second those butterflies disappeared, only a skinny woman and the spider-woman remained. Along with the butterflies, the crowd began to disperse as the spider armor huffed and stomped away. The woman was trembling as she dusted herself off, even though there wasn’t a mark on her. Her gaze darted back, forth, and back again, sweeping the dwindling crowd. She took a couple trembling steps as her eyes swept the area for what had to be the fifth time before she opened her mouth in a squeak. It sounded so strange to hear such a high-pitched noise come from the girl, and even moreso when the girl herself almost jumped a meter in the air at the sound of her own voice. After one more visual sweep of the area, she finally began to speak. 

“D-did you see where that person went?” Her voice sputtered for a moment, as if her tongue was tied in knots that she had to untangle before speaking. It took a moment before he realized who she was trying to talk to—not anybody in the crowd but him, the single person remaining at the scene of the fight.

“That person? You mean the one that undid…?” He wasn’t really sure how to word _the thing that turned you into a big scary monster,_ so he gave a big, wide gesture at her body instead. Hopefully she wouldn't interpret it as something perverted.

“Y-yes! the suit was gold when I first met them, but since they were able to undo it, they have to be the same person!” She kept trying to speak, cutting herself off midsentence as she tried to explain. However, the fragments of what she said, coupled with the belt, were enough for him to get an idea of the whole.

“Did they have an insect design? Like a butterfly?” The moment he asked, her body seemed like it had been injected with pure adrenaline as practically every cell of her body stood at attention, eyes fixated only on him.

“You know them?”

“Erm, sorta?” Did fishing somebody out of a river mean you knew them? He wasn’t really sure. Was that sorta thing a first base, and you kept going until you got to third, and they were saving you from being the envoy of evil or something? Villain relationships left a lot to be considered.

“I-I was hoping to thank them, but since they ran off, I don’t know where! Would you have any idea?”

“Maybe?” Agh, he technically knew what Sayo looked like under the suit, but was that something that was okay to share? And on top of that, he was going to have to make up some sort of excuse to his boss for his extended lunch break! But, on the other hand, Sayo had just saved him, right? They were apparently a villain, but at the same time, they’d still saved some random civilian that they’d barely known. And he still needed to give them a piece of his mind for rooting through his cabinets. “We can maybe look around for them?”

The woman nodded so hard when he made that offer that he was scared she might’ve gotten a concussion for it.

As they strolled, he learned a couple scant facts: the woman asked for that power to help her sisters move into their new apartment. He’d nodded along, cringing when she’d mentioned the price tag of professional movers. With the aid of her monstrous strength, she’d finished the move far ahead of schedule and wandered to where they first met, in hopes of getting her transformation undone earlier than planned. It was there that the spider woman went for her out of nowhere. Even if the suit was slightly different, the person who saved her had to be the same as the one who transformed her; nobody else would have been able to undo the transformation that easily. And, most importantly, the woman talked about the design of the original suit she met, with its swirling black and red accenting the deep, burnished gold. 

While his mind was whirring over how he might have to deal with Sayo in human form, they were nowhere to be found; it was like they’d vanished off the face of the earth. Which might’ve been for the best, if the spider lady was still around picking fights.

For the most part, the girl seemed to just be content walking around, slowing down every so often when they were near a pair of people talking. It was strange, but at least it meant he didn’t have to wrestle with the implications of telling her what Sayo’s human form looked like. At least, until she didn’t just slow, she full-on stopped in front of a guy sitting on a bench.

“Excuse me? Are you, perchance?“ Her sentence trailed off as she facedsome guy with grey hair mumbling something at his phone. True, the build and face were similar, but unless Sayo had gone to a salon, they definitely weren’t the same person. In return, the man gave the girl a confused look. Did she think he was one of her friends or something?

“Excuse me?” The guy's voice was sharp as a knife, evidently annoyed at the interruption. But even though basically everything about the girl was as jittery as somebody with a couple dozen shots of expresso in her system, she straightened her spine and spoke with a kind of confidence hidden deep below her stuttering. 

“Ah, uhm! I’m a musician, so I have an ear for voices, and your voice sounds similar to somebody I met yesterday, and I was just wondering…!” The guy shot a look at both the girl and Battler, a mix between confused as all hell and curious.

“You mean the person you met yesterday, in this plaza?” His words were more than a little guarded, but the tone was firm, knowing. “Who turned you into a monster?“

“Y-yes! Uhm, I just wanted to say, thanks! You saved my sisters a ton of trouble, so the thing about the weird lady who attacked me wasn’t a problem! Thanks again!” Bowing at an exact 90 degree angle to the ground—with both your legs and butt perfectly perpendicular to the ground—was a physical impossibility, and yet the woman, through some feat worthy of the nobel prize in physics, managed to do it before darting off. As she scurried off, there was some cadence to her sprint that was definitely rabbit-esque—maybe that was why she turned into one. Either way, it left him alone with the silver-haired guy who looked halfway between annoyed and tired.

The guy had different hair than Sayo did, but according to the girl, the designs of their armor were carbon copies. But that wasn’t what snatched his attention from reality. No, what his mind was zeroed in on was his face. The guy was staring at Battler, his eyes almost begging him to uncover some secret only he knew. It wasn’t the kind of intense gaze you gave to a potential threat, or a known enemy. It was the look you gave to a friend.

When he returned that gaze, looked straight back at his face, some minuscule details that he would’ve glossed over with a simple glance began to slowly emerge from his face. The edges of his eyebrows were the same shade of brown that Sayo had; the nose, the way the lips were pursed too, had that same strange familiarity, like how you could only recall a song’s lyrics by playing it over in your head.

It was weird as hell, but they were definitely twins, at least. The loud, domineering part of his brain quickly began to yell over the logical part of him—after he ran away right after introducing himself, Battler wasn’t going to just leave him alone like that! You didn’t just rummage through somebody’s stuff, and leave with just a thank you! At the very least, it seemed the guy got that, because he gave a long, pointed sigh.

“So.” Battler crossed his arms. It seemed a good, neutral sort of word, the kind that wouldn’t quite say _hey, are you Sayo?_ but could still tease that information out.

“So?” On second thought, those cold words sorta grated on his nerves. Before his brain could filter it out, his voice was already starting on its more direct approach.

“Don’t give me that! You’re Sayo, right?! Last time we met, I pulled you out of the river, and you took the time to root through my stuff as thanks!”

The guy barely flicked his eyes up again to Battler’s face before putting away his phone and standing up in one single, fluid motion. Even if it was meant to be intimidating, any traces of a threat evaporated as his body was enveloped in Battler’s shadow. Despite that, his voice was low and firm as his eyes flicked up to his face.

“My name when I’m like this is Kanon.” If it was some random person he’d met, he would’ve apologized and been done with it, but every word of that sentence stuck in his craw like a warm lump of caramel. No normal person would mix in a _when I’m like this_ to a comment on a mistaken identity, for one thing. For another, he still hadn’t sat back down; his body was stock-still in front of him, as if _expecting_ something. Very well, then. Worst that would happen would be him embarrassing himself—not an outcome he was unfamiliar with.

“Sayo, Kanon, it doesn’t matter! You were still messing with my stuff! Aren’t you guys at least supposed to have manners?”

“I woke up in an unfamiliar place after being knocked out. I needed to know where I was, and who was keeping me.” As Kanon crossed his arms, the words he spat out felt clinical, prepared. And, unfortunately for Battler, halfway reasonable, even though he'd taken the time to write out a note for when they woke up.

Actually, scratch that, it would be hard to rebut that argument. If that sorta thing happened to him, he wouldn’t have been half as gentle with his captor’s stuff as Sayo was. As it rattled through every potential conversation topic he could think to pivot the chat, his brain experienced the unique short-circuiting that could only happen in extremely tense, extremely awkward situations. Finally, after throwing enough random topics into it, it finally spit out a half-decent icebreaker.

“So, then, what about that woman in the blue? Do you know her?” The bunny girl had to have been Kanon’s, right? Else he wouldn’t have been able to revoke that transformation with a mere touch.

He then immediately regretted his choice as he saw the reaction on Kanon’s face.

“Think of a mosquito that flits around your body,” he spat. Battler had to slow his pace as he listened; the difference in height meant his walking stride was far larger than Kanon’s. “She’s been giving me trouble lately is all.”

“Trouble?” The gears in his head turned ever so gently as they click-click-clicked into place before spitting out a hypothesis. “Wait, was she the one who dumped you in the river?”

Sayo knew that total silence was more suspicious than just denying it, right? Especially with the glaring at the ground—yup, without a doubt he’d figured out the not-so-secret identity of the person who kicked his ass.

“It comes with the territory,” he said in the exact same tone you used to justify your favorite social media site tracking you to the end of the earth. 

“I…guess?” Man, despite all those childhood games where he and a ton of kids staged mock hero battles—complete with cardboard armor—he silently thanked every lucky star in the heavens that he never actually ended up getting involved with it; getting your ass kicked every day by the same woman was only fun in porn. “Do you win, at least?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” That word was one of those things that sounded good on the surface- _sometimes_ you would get a snack was definitely a lot better than never getting one at all, but when it meant you sometimes, but not all the time, got thrown into a river, then maybe it was time to reconsider? At least for Battler, it was. maybe if the person throwing you off was a female kaijin with big boobs, he’d say yeah and keep asking for it, but there was a difference between that and just getting your ass handed to you.

Kanon stuffed his hands in his pockets as quickly as Battler did when he was short just a couple yen on transit fares. Right. He probably didn’t plan to get accosted by Battler after that fight, just like he didn’t plan to get dumped in the river that one time. Things simply slotted into place like that. Sayo was probably hoping that they’d be saved and never have to see his face again. Sadly, even if he didn’t have any sort of weird powers, it was impossible to get rid of Battler Ushiromiya so easily! If he said that spider lady woman was a mosquito, then he was a fruit fly; obnoxious and impossible to get rid of unless you wished to devote an entire week to eradicating the pest from every inch of your life.

“So I did a bit of digging online—” Ah, now _that_ got his attention. “Aaaand it turned out that the person I pulled out of the river was a villain.”

He could have mentioned his impromptu research earlier, but that quite frankly took second fiddle to telling the dude off for messing with his things. He had a system for storing his stuff, even if that system was a confusing heap of stuff littered on his countertop. To him, disturbing it was not a mere crime, but a grave sin. Also related, but bringing up Sayo’s apparent villainhood may have also slipped his mind until now.

Maybe that was because when speaking in person, Kanon didn’t really _seem_ like a villain. The guy trying to dodge his questions with a glare wasn’t the sort of over-the-top, fantastical type of person he’d expect one of them to be. Instead, he was just…normal. A bit antisocial-ish, but not evil.

“And why does that interest you?” Kanon’s voice was flat; it didn’t plead, only asked, and at once Battler realized he may have made a mistake.

“Wait, I wasn’t planning to do anything! I just…” Damnit, he thought it would be an interesting icebreaker, not a hook to drag them both into another uncomfortable conversation! “I was wondering, that’s all!”

“Wondering?” The two eyed each other like a cat and a mouse would, except that in this scenario, he wasn’t sure who was the cat and who was the mouse.

“Uhm,” fuck, he didn’t really plan this question out. Abort mission, abort mission! “I was curious as to! Why you were floating down the river that one time!”

The words barely stammered out, but that topic was safe, right? He’d already said it was the spider lady who did that. Normally he would’ve made a dirty joke, but something about this scenario only gave him the feeling that doing that would just make the situation worse; at least that question didn’t seem to tick a nerve like a joke about bottoming would.

“I didn’t have any choice in the matter.” Kanon hesitated so long before speaking that for a moment, Battler thought he was giving up on the conversation; he wouldn’t exactly blame him for just wanting to walk away. But, eventually, he spoke, the gaze as cold and clear as ice, far more intense than he couldn’t ever imagined.

“I guess that’s true. Ihihi.” Something about the words seemed to warrant, no, demand a chuckle to break the ice, to possibly return the conversation to calmer, more playful waters.

“I mean before that, as well.” For the first time, his voice felt like it held power within it, like his mere words were one of those bells that could chime in a tower and be heard miles away. There was no tired sense of obligation, no tone layered beneath it that felt like it was to answer the question and be over it. He wanted to hear more, to slowly prod at that heart underneath.

“What do you mean?”

“You know how different belts denote different sources of power?” With some sort of magic, Kanon made his words sound like both the setup to a boring lecture and key to some hidden knowledge, squirreled away beneath the crowd.

“Yeah, different sources, different belts, right?” He had an idea, thanks to that obsession with them he had as a kid; armor systems were like operating systems, while forms were more like programs. Anybody could make a system, in _theory_ , but a form? A form was easy. If you wanted variety without effort, you could just swap a color palette of a suit you already had or something. Those armor systems unique to a single person were less mere objects and more pure _power_ , consolidated and bound to a single physical form. That, or you were an asshole CEO with more money than god. Sometimes, you were both.

“The insect system I run off of is about evolution. Survival of the fittest, if you will. If you eliminate all the other players, you get something granted to you.” Despite the sentence being little more than complete nonsense, Kanon rattled it out like it was a speech he’d scripted. For one thing, Battler was pretty sure spiders weren’t insects, and second, that sounded nothing like the actual theory of evolution.Third…

“ _Eliminate_?” Even if battle royale fight-to-the-death systems were popular in manga and movies, if you were so much to _create_ such a thing, you’d be arrested on the spot. There was no sympathy, no forgiveness for the monsters who created those types of systems, those belts that didn’t condone but _encourage_ the snuffing out of another human life.

“The meaning of the term is up to you. Destroying the belt is enough, normally.” Kanon was calm when he said it, but Battler didn’t like the sound of _normally_. Normal implied an _abnormal,_ the existence of a situation where it was _expected_ that you would come out of a fight bloodied and barely breathing after performing what could only be called murder.

“Why the hell did you agree to that if it means your life is in danger?!” Battler’s heart had been bleeding long before this moment, but something about that complete nonchalance, not even seeming to care about the elimination aspect of the system, the fact that anybody he faced had not just power, but motive to grind his body into a pulp until it no longer breathed, punctured right through him. Even if the meaning of Kanon was just a name and a face, even if they were barely above the status of complete strangers, every iota of his body wanted to reject that system, to grab it from him and the woman and shatter it beneath his heel.

“If a thread dances just within your grasp, offering you a path out of hell, would you take it?” The way he spoke of that violence as if it was a salvation, not a sin, was almost as out of place as his expression, one that almost pleaded with him to find the deeper meaning behind those words. That vague pivot, of answering a question with another question, felt like there was a second meaning. That there were feelings sunken beneath the words, circling around them but never truly surfacing as to his reasoning.

“Why was that thread the battle royale system?” He huffed before he spoke, crossing his arms and training his eyes on Kanon.

“Anything could’ve been that thread. Anything at all, really. I don’t know why the fates decided it was that, but they offered that thread to me, and I never let go.” Almost as if he was proving this penitence, he held out his palms, calloused. Even for a guy like Battler, whose third home was the gym (second only to the library), the wear and pain on his hands felt far, far more a set of dumbbells ever could create.

“For me, it doesn’t matter why this system was created. It was the thread I grabbed onto, and it slowly pulled me out of the hell I lived in.”

“Death of the author.” he only meant it as a side comment, as some way to parse this borderline impossible-to-believe speech, but Kanon nodded.

“Death of the author,” he parroted. Somehow, the whisper of death on his tongue felt wrong, like those mysterious children in movies saying things they obviously shouldn’t.

“You said that the belt is _normally_ enough. Have you killed anybody?” He was quiet. That word, _normally_ , when thrown into that sentence, felt like the type of thing that you might have thrown into the sentence because you weren’t sure, rather than because you knew it was a potential outcome.

“No.” His answer was firm and immediate, sharp and biting enough that there was zero doubt in his mind that he was telling the truth. After speaking, Kanon had zeroed in on his face; even without words, Battler knew he was judging his reaction to see if he believed in those firm, unshakeable words. Those eyes felt as if they were drawing him in, making the gravity of the planet feel a hundred times more intense.

So Battler chuckled a little, smiling, an attempt to cut through the tense miasma that had enveloped the conversation. “That sounds like something a guy who murdered people would say.”

“I’ve defeated a couple combatants, but haven’t killed any.” His eyes met Battler’s for a brief moment before he continued. “Once you’re defeated and your belt destroyed, you lose your memories of it. There’s no way to know anything with absolute certainty, so you’re free to believe whatever you like.”

Well, that definitely didn’t do anything to lighten the mood. If anything, it dampened as a hundred possible scenarios started to flood into his mind, each more messed up than the last. Even though he’d known for years that his memory had never been that great, some part of his brain seemed to whisper that it was possible those gaps were something sinister.

It was a possibility that everybody entertained at some point in their life, that perhaps that wayward thought from a week ago actually caused a much larger event. Even if logic dictated that the chances were a million to one, your brain would still wonder if it was possible that maybe, just maybe you were that one.

“So that means I could’ve been a combatant?” He tried to joke around and raise his pitch, but he was pretty positive some minuscule hint of anxiety still shone through.

“Other than the fact I’ve never fought anybody as loud as you, there’s no way to tell.” For the first time, Kanon gave a chuckle, so low and quiet you could mistake the sound for the dozens of people chatting nearby.

“That’s a really weird rule to tack on.” It might’ve been halfway logical if the creator had their own system and didn’t want to be found out by the other members. But that train of thought was based the cruel type of logic, the kind found only in the small type of insurance claims or corporate lawsuits, the kind that spoke of your value not in terms of humanity but in liability.

“Take it up with the creator of the system.”

“Who’s the creator?” There was always a creator for this type of thing, right? Some mysterious figure that created the system for a strange, abstract gain that only they truly understood.

Kanon shrugged.

“C’mon, you can’t not know! Didn’t the creator give it to you?” That was the norm, right? Somebody had to have given the thing to you! It wasn’t supposed to just appear in a burst of light from some place halfway across the world; if that were possible, it would be far, far easier to just sell the technology to a shipping company and retire at the tender young age of however old you were at this present moment.

“I got it in the mail” was perhaps the most anticlimactic, boring way to receive the ability to transform into an all-powerful suit of armor, and yet Kanon said it anyways. Weren’t you supposed to get it while being attacked by a monster or something? By mail was just so…generic. “I’ve been trying to trace down who sent it and who created the system, but nothing I’ve done so far has given me results.”

“Have you run the return address?”

“I’ve ran the return address, ran the stamp, dusted the package for prints, tried to source the packaging, talked to the post office, and looked up the handwriting. Nothing.” He ticked off the methods on his fingers one by one, rattling them off like a grocery list. Or, well, like a grocery list Battler would never have come up with one his own. “I have no idea if the creator even exists, let alone is involved with this.”

“If you find them, tell me so I can give them a piece of my mind.”

“I’ll let them know of your death wish.”

“Thanks! It means a lot to me. Be sure to cuss out the creator while writing my eulogy, okay?” He could already picture the article, a couple sentences long and wedged deep in the daily paper. _Battler Ushiromiya, 25. Please take the person who created the insect battle royale system and tell them to fuck themselves, and also maybe arrest them for murder._

“The creator probably coded a bullshit power into their personal armor, so I’m sure you won’t be the only one with an epitaph.” Dammit, even if Kanon was probably right, he wouldn’t let that deter him!

“Hey, then maybe we can have it side-by-side! We’ll have mine first, and then have the insults against them spill over into yours!” Kanon gave a tired sigh at the suggestion, which was about as close to a no as you could get without actually saying the word. Fair.

“I don’t want it to come to that. For one thing, I’d prefer not to share an epitaph with you.” Given how Kanon seemed to be loosening up enough that he casually tossed that joke at him, Battler figured it was only fair to respond in kind.

“Said like a true ex-husband.” Judging from his expression alone, if Kanon had a drink he probably would’ve spit it out.

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” he sighed.

As the two paused in the brief silence, Battler got a ding from his phone. Fuck. He’d set his text alerts to different tones depending on who was calling, and that one was unmistakably his boss.

“Uh, sorry, I have to go.” He didn’t even need to pull his phone out to get an idea of what it said.

“I apologize if I kept you.” If Kanon were not so oblivious to the innate boredom of office life, he wouldn’t have looked so genuinely apologetic, dammit!

“Nah, it’s fine! If you see me here again during lunch break, feel free to stop by and distract me from my boring office life. Seeya.” While he didn’t want to brag, the transition between waving Kanon goodbye and sprinting back towards his office building would’ve definitely impressed a couple olympic athletes. The actual running was a bit less impressive, sure, but wasn’t a strong start the most important part of winning a race? His boss seemed to act like she’d seen that stunning performance, given how she’d simply patted him on the back and asked where he’d been when he got back. He might not have won anything, but that definitely felt like a small victory.

* * *

Meeting up with them didn’t stop Sayo from continuously living in his head rent-free. Even if he processed a good dozen mental eviction orders, the thoughts that they’d lost, or worse, that they’d _forgotten_ , kept ringing through his head. If they lost the battle royale, would they no longer remember him? Would all those memories of them together vanish down a hole until he was left stumbling the next time they met?

He could only sit there and hope that the next time they met, the two of them would be on the same page as they last met. That the string that pulled them out of what they said was hell was still there and not vanished among the flames.

Until then, he was stuck with his mind’s kangaroo court.

* * *

Simply by the nature of the beast, it was very, very difficult to get Battler Ushiromiya good and truly drunk. Tipsy, perhaps. Buzzed, maybe. But drunk? For that to happen, you required nothing short of divine intervention—and perhaps a liter or so of his granddad’s absinthe. Which, for the record, tasted like piss; anybody looking to wager on if divine intervention or absinthe would get him drunk first would have their money best spent on the idea of gods coming down from the sky and personally getting him wasted.

But, even then, it didn’t mean he was immune to that fluttering, bubbly feeling welling up in his chest after knocking back a couple beers at an after-work social.

That same warmth that bubbled in his veins also made him glad his apartment was only a couple blocks away; driving under the influence was, after all, illegal. It was because of that he stumbled under the skies of neon lights, heading in the nebulous direction of _home_. As the chilly fall wind battered him, howling and raging as it was forced between the roads of a city block, it mingled with the tones of the rest of the city in a strange, twisted symphony. It was never truly quiet, especially after dark; but to a city-dweller, the constant hum of the city was little more than background noise. Were it to suddenly stop, cut off with not so much as a whimper, the city would lose its soul. It would be like the discarded cicada shells you could find on a hot summer day, devoid of everything that gave it life.

But as he stepped forwards in some side street, the noise seemed to stop. It was something so minor, and yet so important, that he wasn’t entirely sure what was off until he noticed something moving from the corner of his eye.

Even with the night reducing everything to shades of monochrome, the armor was unmistakeable as it strode up beside him.

“Huh? Sayo?” T-that _was_ Sayo, right?

The suit nodded, which was not exactly an inviting gesture when it was past 10 PM. Even if the armor apparently muffled your voice so much that you practically had to scream to be heard, it didn’t make getting approached by a silent suit of armor feel like anything less than the opening scene of a horror movie.

“It-it’s sort of late out, isn’t it?” Nerves plus alcohol equaled a scratchy, stammered sentence.

“Hoh? It doesn’t seem too late for a businessman to stumble home tipsy, does it?” The octave was lower, slower, more confident, but it still made him sigh in relief.

“A little, ihihihi.” Did he reek of alcohol _that_ much? “Did you see me tripping over myself and decide you wanted to say hi?”

“I saw you heading back to where you lived, and decided to keep an eye on you, just in case.” Even if they tried to flippantly dismiss him, he could still feel the corners of his mouth lifting up in a small, tipsy grin as they mentioned his apartment.

“Guess I’ve got a stalker, then.” He could feel their eyes narrow through the mask.

“Weren’t you the one to kidnap me the first time we met?”

“That wasn’t a kidnapping! You were floating in a river!” His words were received by the empty space the armor had been a moment earlier. God, how did Sayo get so fast at walking? They were short!!! “Hey!!”

Seriously, he was a good dozen centimeters taller, this wasn’t fair! His stride should be longer! In such scenarios like this, his chest puffing out from a deep breath was second nature, his feet already slapping against the pavement before his brain even thought to give the command. His brain also didn’t give the command to have the feeling of cement suddenly vanish from beneath his feet; that had to be the beer. But instead of feeling pavement, he instead felt a golden arm draped around his chest, the only barrier between him and the ground; even if it happened in a split second didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out was had happened.

For a man whose muscles were his pride and joy, embarrassment didn’t even begin to describe the feeling floating through him. Here was a guy who probably had at least two dozen kilos on Sayo, being held above the pavement with a single hand. He couldn’t even carry Ange with a single arm, while Sayo was here, acting like it was nothing!

All in all? Rude. Please, take mercy on him and just let him fall to the ground instead of subjecting him to this humiliation…even if he was, theoretically, into that sort of thing (he was), forcing such a thing upon him while walking back home in public was no place for it! That was exactly why he reacted to that embarrassment by freezing up, getting to his feet and making a serious attempt to act like those last few seconds never happened as he walked forwards. Very quickly, he might add.

Sayo matched his pace effortlessly as if they were both marching in an awkward, hurried parade which had just encountered a couple drops of rain. It was only after a block or so that he finally slowed, with the armor once again matching his speed as his heart slowly came down from its high.

“If you’re leading me into an ambush, you’re not doing a very good job of it.” The eyes of the helmet were expressionless, but the voice crackled with a kind of wild, barely restrained laughter at their own joke.

“Only place I’m leading you to is my apartment. Shouldn’t a stalker know where that is? Or have you been slipping?”

“Mmmm, those incidents were all coincidence, coincidence! If you patrol through the same area long enough, you’re bound to find the same people eventually.”

“I suppose. Small world.” They were strange odds, but it would be a lie to insist that the dice weren’t loaded after their first encounter; if not for that mysterious evening, he wouldn’t have started paying attention to those fights, wouldn’t have approached the two duking it out outside his office. And then, after the second meeting, it would’ve been easy to spot him on the streets; a man possessing 180 centimeters of height and blazing red hair was not easy to miss in any sense of the word.

Sayo nodded in agreement. “I’ve spotted the spider woman’s armor while wandering around untransformed. The local hero scene here is fairly small.”

“I mean, that’s good, right? Not many people butting in to your battles.”

“Most stick to the popular spots. For our systems, we tend to stay out of the spotlight.”

That at least made a bit of sense. Police intruding on a battle was probably the worst way a high-stakes fight could go down; it was also why creating a battle royale system was a very, very, very bad idea. Sure, if you collected all the tokens of all the combatants, you could become god or revive the dead or whatever, but realistically? There would probably be somebody who’d lose the belt on the subway, or get arrested halfway through the round, or whatever. Once you got just one of those belts confiscated by police,your whole plan pretty much fell into shambles.

He was deep in consideration enough that he entered the apartment building without noticing. Sayo slinked in after him, the armor casting a strange glow under the outside lights.

The light of his apartment was dim and yellow as he opened the door. If not for him realizing he didn’t clean the counter, and noticing the dishes piled up in the sink, it would’ve almost felt nostalgic. aA least the first time they met, things were relatively clean. Sayo, at least, didn’t seem to care. If his dishes weren’t all in the sink, he would’ve offered a glass of water. In this situation, all he could offer was an awkward smile and a vague gesture towards his couch.

“Wanna stay for a moment?” His brain gave the offer instinctively, without giving the pros and cons even a millisecond to make their arguments. Sayo, in all their strange, confusing glory, was a guest, but more importantly, was somebody he quite literally had trusted with his life.

“If you’re fine with it.” With a burst of golden light, the armor unravelled off their body, leaving only a butterfly-shaped token and belt behind. _Elegant_ was a strange word to use to describe somebody, but it worked; Sayo’s brown hair flowed down in airy waves, their clothes neat and orderly. The butterfly was summarily tucked into their shirt, the belt squared away somewhere on their person—where that was, he wasn’t quite sure.

There was another pause. Battler wondered if he had any beer to offer to maybe make this less awkward. Maybe in the fridge? Let’s see, there was leftover rice, some pickles, takeout, but no beer. Dammit, nothing good to offer. As he looked up from the barren fridge, Sayo was hunkered down on the couch, scrolling through their phone. A moment later, he plunked down next to them, making sure all his messages were in order, and sighed.

His eyelids kept getting heavier and heavier as he scrolled through the chat, culminating in a barely surpassed yawn. Right, it was getting a little late, and he wasn’t sure if Sayo needed somewhere to sleep. Maybe, if they needed a couch… “Do you live nearby?”

“I’m close enough. I can just walk on the subway.” Ah, right; Sayo could just take off the belt and not be an attention-grabbing piece of shimmering armor. Staking out somewhere halfway across the prefecture, after all, sorta sounded like a bad idea. You couldn’t really run back and forth like that all day like on TV, where the show would cut out any 2-hour train trip from Nagano to Tokyo. As a kid, it was always something he wondered about; once the hero got the call that monsters were wrecking havoc in the capitol, did he look out the window of the train, hoping the scenery would hurry up? Did they look at the others on the train, going about their business unaware of that danger they were racing towards? It was the sort of thing you only saw on this side of the screen, sitting down next to Sayo.

“Where on the line are you?”

“A little up ways. No transfers, which is nice.” The deliberate vagueness didn’t go unnoticed, but whatever. The fact that they came in here willingly was enough for him, even if the omission stung a little.

“Mmm, that’s nice. The line’s busy here in the mornings, so I can neeeeeever get a seat.”

“I get on the train early on the line, so the commute is longer, but you are able to get a seat. I use the time to read LINE novels.”

“Wait, can’t your suit fly?” Sayo’s suit had a butterfly motif, right? Weren’t those things usually able to fly?

“Not for very long, so the train is more convenient. It’s like driving versus the train. And it means I don’t get noticed.” On second thought, if he had the ability to fly, he’d be permanently rooted to the ground. There were far too many variables that could potentially lead to the thought of him splattered against the earth, falling, falling! For all its boring mundane-ness, the ground was far underrated for its little-discussed ability to keep you from falling.

“Taking the train sounds about right. You don’t seem like the type to want attention.”

Uh, what was that expression Sayo was giving him? The only real comparison he could draw in his head was with a creepy kid in a horror movie, the kind who had been dropping cryptic, mysterious hints nonstop. “What gave you that impression?”

“You’re quiet is all! Sorta reclusive.” That face kept whispering that he needed to pick his words carefully, but he wasn’t sure how. It was an assignment without a rubric, a court without laws; even so, he plunged ahead.

As he spoke, Sayo started laughing—no, _cackling_. Laughter was supposed to be joyful, but this was harsh, almost mocking. “Right, right. I forgoooot. You’ve never seen me truly fight.”

From tip to toe, it was like a completely different person had taken over Sayo. Their shoulders pulled to attention as they leaned forwards, grinning like a jackal. What the hell. True, the clips he saw were shitty and taken from far away, sure, and the rabbit fight was short, barely even a minute. But it should’ve explained what the hell was up with that expression! He slightly regretted letting them into his house now.

Sayo’s grin was so sharp that it could cut flesh. “A heel needs this sort of personality, right? It’s boring if somebody you fought wasn’t at least memorable.”

Oh. Was this role-play? What was that word—keyfabe? To keep an identity secret maybe? It felt a bit odd to have a pro wrestling thing on something so high-stakes, but hey, he would be lying if he didn’t love that sort of thing. God, this superhero thing was weird. “I guess you could say that.“

Sayo’s hands folded in front of their devilish grin. In return, he crossed his arms and tried to give a friendly smile. “It looks like you’re having quite a bit of fun with this.”

“Exactly.”

Eh, not like he’d pass up that sorta thing if he could guarantee he wouldn’t be limping back home half the time. Office life was so stifling sometimes that he just wanted to run out of the building and scream at the top of his lungs, and something about the cocky, arrogant air in front of him made him want to actually see more, to find a vat of this villain nonsense and run his fingers through it. But then again, he was a sucker for that sorta personality—always had been. Maybe that was why it seemed so easy to accept this strange, confusing person sitting across from him without a moment’s hesitation.

Alternatively, hero stuff was so weird that he couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around it, so he just accepted the punches as they came. Wasn’t the first time that had happened.

“So, does this system you’re fighting in have any heroes, or it is all weirdoes with questionable morals?“

“The person I got this from was relatively normal.” The charm Sayo pulled out from hell-knew-where was red, inlaid with carvings that resembled a beetle. As they laughed, the light reflected off it in exactly the way that red beetle form from the last time they met glimmered in the sun.

“Did you have to defeat somebody for it?”

“It was for the sake of my wish. They were about to do the same.” For all the bravado and noise of earlier, this answer came quietly.

“I guess.” Was the weird mood coming over him the beer or something else? He couldn’t tell.

“As for everybody else, they’re a colorful cast! This system’s motto seems to be survival of the strangest.” As if to return to the hustle and bustle of a moment ago, they put their head back and howled at their own joke. 

“How many people are even in there, anybody?”

“No idea! Could be ten, could be ten thousand. For all I know, the creator could be distributing new systems even as I speak.” There are so many things weird about this. For one why, why the hell would you agree to something like this? This was just a mess of questions.

“Why the hell would you agree to this, then?” He could barely contain his voice as its volume spilled over the edges. It was insanity! Even if you were the type to mindlessly click the terms and conditions on a website signup sheet without reading over a thousand pages of legal minutia, you’d at least want to confirm the details on something that messed with your memories, right?!

“Mmm, did you not remember my nice speech about a spider’s thread dangling over the pits of hell? I put a lot of thought into it, you know.” They pouted at his shout, and as much as he wanted to deny it, their face was cute and their expression was sad enough that his heart couldn’t help but tone his voice down a couple notches.

“Was it seriously that important to you?” Even though those words kept tormenting him when he mulled over that conversation, he didn’t think it was that important—an ad lib, maybe, a offhand comment possibly. He didn’t think it was a truth that was so ingrained in your soul that if it were uprooted, it would pull up your entire heart along with it.

“If it wasn’t important to me, I would’ve lost a long time ago.”

“I guess that’s true. Sounds pretty easy to just give up, and get all that erased.” You didn’t have to live with the fact you lost taunting for for the rest of your life, at least.

“It’s easy to forget. What’s harder to do is to remember.”

He nodded. Some things were hard to forget, like those oh-so-numerous embarrassing childhood memories, but when it came to day-to-day things, it all eventually went into that white void of your brain, never to be dug up again. Only the special things were locked away, protected from the worst of time’s ravages.

Sayo was silent once more, so he spoke up instead.

“Well, erm. I hope you’ll be okay in all this fighting stuff. You don’t seem to be half bad, for a villain-type character. A bit weird, but nothing _evil_.”

“Hoh? If that’s true, I may need to reassess how I do things.”

“I mean, you saved that girl, right? And me, too.” Evil was a condition, a mental state where you chose what to do solely based on what would cause others most pain. That didn’t match with the Sayo he knew; even if they were a bit dubious, they didn’t seem to tread down that path of causing others as much pain as possible. Even if you were a bit selfish, a little rude, that didn’t make you cruel, it made you human.

“That was because I owed a debt to you, was it not?”

“Don’t think you’re the type who would let a random stranger die like that.”

“So you’re calling me sooooooft? Don’t you know that’s poison to a villain? One second you’re saving somebody, the next you’re adopting an orphan or something and all your credibility is gone.” They seemed genuinely disappointed at the comparison, as if the mere accusation had smashed their belt to smithereens.

“I don’t know, you seem pretty credible to me. You don’t attack random civilians and whatnot.“

“But if I did that, I’d no longer be a villain. I’d just be a boring, everyday criminal. What’s the fun in thaaaat? I’d lose my belt, my standing, my powers!” And also would be in jail. From what he’d seen in games and anime, villain prosecutors didn’t mess around one bit; just a single screwup and you’ll lose every ounce of freedom for at least half a decade.“If you set the bar in hell, you get the devil, you knoooow.”

Sayo stretched out the vowels like a kid stretched out taffy, pulling and squishing the sounds as they wished.

“Somehow, I’m having trouble believing you’re that bad at heart.” This strange mask that Sayo was wearing seemed to be more focused on having fun that being evil, the kind of villain on a Saturday morning cartoon that simply wished to cause problems on purpose instead of create some horrendous, complicated scheme.

“You speak of a stranger as if you’ve been friends for decades.”

“I don’t know, you just don’t give off that bad of a vibe.” Even if his gut judgement had landed him in trouble, it was something he stuck by steadfast, one of the few things that was nigh-impossible to get him to budge on.

“You have a lot of faith in your gut,” they said, barely audible above the sound of the fridge running.

“I guess I do, ihihi. It doesn’t prove me wrong too often.”

Somehow, those words brought a small, genuine smile to Sayo’s lips. “If you keep trusting strangers like that, it’ll become your undoing, you know~”

“I mean…I’ve always felt that trusting people paid off more than it hurt. Even if one out of every ten people is out to get you, that’s still nine people that aren’t.” As much as he hated being betrayed or used, he still wanted to believe from the very bottom of his heart that everybody he knew was, fundamentally, a good person. That those flaws shining through their cracked facades were mere surface imperfections, not fissures that extended down to the core. That their actions could be explained by circumstance, environment, anything but _them_.

Sayo was once again quiet, so he continued.

“Is the same not true for you? You took a risk coming here, right? I could’ve been teaming up with somebody, or been a secret participant in this game, but you still decided to come here and say hi.” As he spoke, all hints of that playful personality from earlier had vanished.

“The risks of me exposing my heart are different from yours.” He…didn’t really have any way to argue against that; something in those words conveyed nothing but loneliness, that it was Battler and Battler alone that they had visited like this. That he was the only one they had trusted to this degree. If all it took to sit down with somebody like this was a mere couple conversations together, then imagining the rest of Sayo’s life made his heart clench in his chest.

“Isn’t there a risk from not opening your heart up, though? If I didn’t, I would’ve gone nuts with loneliness a long time ago.” Sayo didn’t meet his eyes, but he didn’t need to see them to get an idea of what they were thinking.

Even if his soul ached from the smallest things, it wasn’t something he fought; it was just something you rolled with. His heart had been pierced many times before, so many that it was pointless to count, and yet at the same time, nobody wanted to be the reason your heart was stabbed with pity, nor did they want you to think of them as a poor, helpless creature. Instead, they wanted you to spare that pity and give it to the universe so that perhaps the gods above would make their life just a little easier. Even if he knew it was something he couldn’t provide, the knife would only gouge deeper if he didn’t say something to them, whether it be a validation or a helping hand. The deepest recesses of his heart wanted to hold out that hand to Sayo, for them to grip onto it instead of that spider’s thread leading out of hell.

“If you ever need anything, feel free to stop by here.” His words morphed into a yawn halfway through his sentence, bubbling up for a moment until it finally burst through his throat. The warmth that those shots of beer had injected into his body certainly wasn’t helping him in that struggle, and eventually, after a bit of fighting, a longer, toothier yawn finally escaped from him.

“If you’re starting to nod off, then I guess I should take my leave.”

As Sayo stood up, a voice began to blare at the back of his mind, screaming that this might be the last time they ever met. That the insect battle royale would continue, eliminating all its contestants until everything about how this charm was _Sayo’s_ would be rubbed off by a chain of endlessly changing hands. It was possible that the name papillion could end up as just a whisper in the wind, a single charm in somebody’s arsenal.

It was not just papillion that would be gone from Sayo’s mind, but the name Battler, too. And yet, with all that, the words that came out of his mouth were still “Yeah. Seeya next time, I guess?”

Sayo seemed to understand the look he gave them perfectly as they nodded. And within those eyes, he caught glimpse of some longing loneliness, hoping that future of them meeting again would come true.

“I suppose. See you next time.”

Sayo repeated the words slowly, but there was the faintest hint of a grin as they closed the door behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> sadly this fic is relatively short so i didn’t really add that much Obligatory Toku Nonsense so please image there is a separate chapter where there's a high-stakes iron chef cage match battle that has nothing to do with the main plot or something along those lines.


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